


Counting My Cards Down to One

by Anglophile_Rin



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Klaus Hargreeves & David "Dave" Katz During Vietnam, M/M, Superstition, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 22:08:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30028563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anglophile_Rin/pseuds/Anglophile_Rin
Summary: Maybe there was something to these goddamn playing cards. Weirder things had happened to Klaus than a good luck charm actually bringing good luck. (His birth, for one, comes to mind. The rest of his existence, for another). He turned to share the joke with Dave, cursing over how close it was, about to say how lucky he was, that Dave loved him so much.
Relationships: David "Dave" Katz/Original Male Character, Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 11
Kudos: 31





	Counting My Cards Down to One

**Author's Note:**

> Title from John My Beloved by Sufjan Stevens.
> 
> This fic started as a headcanon based on a behind-the-scenes picture of Dave getting into makeup with an Ace of Spades tucked into the band of his helmet. I brought it to Elliott's House, and as we do best, we made it sad. This is for my babes over there!

It was something Klaus had heard of before, of course. He watched movies. He'd seen Top Gun. Military guys liked nicknames. They were like Biker Clubs that way. Or drug dealers.

A lot of people liked nicknames. 

He just didn't expect to not fucking understand a single one of them.

"Okay, so...he really likes meat balls?"

"Um… you know, I'm really not sure? I don't think I've ever asked him."

Klaus shook his head, his perplexed frown deepening just onto the cusp of frustrated. “What then? Is his head shaped like a meatball? Oh...oh shit, did he like, catch some shrapnel…” Klaus gestured vaguely down his own body, wincing on instinct. Dave laughed through his own wince at the implication.

“No, no, nothing like that. I don’t even really know! Everyone’s just called him that from like, the second we got off the bus. It’s just...what he’s called, now.” Dave finished with a shrug, but Klaus wasn’t ready to drop it just yet.

“That is ridiculous. That's...that’s illogical.” Klaus fought the urge to stomp his foot. “And now you’ve made me use the word _illogical_! God, I feel like Five. I need a shower or, like, a muscle relaxer or something.”

“It’s really not that big of a deal, babe.”

“I _know_ it’s not but it is _bothering_ me!” It irked Klaus more than he cared to admit to himself. Having been saddled with his own incredibly on-the-nose nickname (codename) at a very young age, it just didn’t seem right to be handing them out willy-nilly. “At least yours makes sense. You always have that stupid card in your helmet.” he grumbled, talking about the ace of spades Dave kept tucked securely in his helmet band. Dave reached up when Klaus mentioned it, like he was reassuring himself it was still there, but halfway through remembered that he wasn't actually _wearing_ his helmet and aborted the movement with a sheepish little smile.

Klaus narrowed his eyes as a thought occurred to him. “Hey, is that what you were going for? Trying to pick your own nickname? Because that sounds like cheating, to me.”

Klaus looked over at Dave to find him with his eyes downcast, avoiding Klaus'. Klaus could just see his eyelashes fluttering as he blinked rapidly a few times before shaking his head. 

“Shit, did I say something stupid again? It didn’t, like, belong to your dead grandpa or anything, did it?”

Dave twisted his mouth into a grimace. His hand came up to rub at the back of his neck, which was absolutely a Dave Katz Stress Move. “Um...dead boyfriend, actually.”

Klaus stared at Dave a moment, his mouth gaped open as he struggled to think of something to say. Words failing him, he nodded once, quietly to himself, and stood up from the patch of dirt the two had been sprawled out on, dusting off his fatigues.

“What, Klaus. Wait, where are you going?” Dave's head shot up at Klaus' sudden movement. Dave had never known Klaus to get jealous of anyone, much less dead ex-boyfriend, and it was obviously throwing him for a loop that Klaus seemed to be storming off.

“I’m going into the jungle to stick my pistol in my mouth. Maybe then it’ll stop spewing out stupidly insensitive things.” Klaus explained flippantly, flapping his hand around his head like he was conducting the words. Dave laughed, lunging forward to snag Klaus by the wrist, dragging him back down. 

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“I'm _trying_ not to be!” Klaus protested with an exaggerated whine, miming sticking a gun in his mouth. "Bang bang, problem solved." Despite his vivid protests, though, he followed Dave’s efforts back to the ground easily enough. Dave kept pulling until they were pressed against each other’s sides, thigh to ankle, elbows knocking together as they breathed. 

“You’re fine, Klaus, you didn’t know.” Dave arranged his face into the approximation of a puppy-eyed look. “Please don't make me a two-time war widow?”

Klaus’ jaw dropped, but his eyes sparked with absolute _delight_. “David Joseph Katz, that was fucking _black._ Not to mention there is no way you’re the ‘girl’ in this relationship.”

“Well, that’s a little presumptuous.”

“I am what I am, baby, and what I am is very confusing and constantly evolving. One day I’ll get you in front of the internet and have _it_ explain it all to you.” He hooked his pinky finger over Dave’s where their hands rested between them. “Okay, so there’s gotta be a story.”

“I mean, are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Klaus was honestly perplexed. He could see Dave not wanting to _tell_ a story about his dead ex, but there was no reason for Klaus not to want to hear it.

“I don’t know, you seemed, you know. Jealous.” Dave shrugged a little, dropping his shoulders a touch exasperatedly when Klaus started to laugh.

“I...am not even sure what that would look like. No, no Dave, you’re absolutely fine. Please tell me about why you have your dead boyfriend’s playing card in your helmet?”

Dave started with what he knew about the card itself. That it had a long and coloured history when it came to wars and the men who fight in them. In the second world war, it became a sort of good luck symbol in certain units. Even men who weren’t superstitious clung on to whatever they could with bullets flying over their heads, so the card joined the ranks of rabbits’ feet and rosaries. When the sons of the survivors headed off to their own wars, their fathers broke the aces out again to keep their boys safe.

But Vietnam was a very different kind of war. Even living it, and not with fifty years of hindsight on their sides, it was clearly a war without any true moral high ground. A war fought by boys who were fueled by drugs and rock music and a constant, intense state of fear, one that a childhood spent in the 1950s hadn’t prepared them to deal with. What started as good luck soon became a calling card, a scare tactic, a bragging right. The loud and the boisterous would toss a card down on a kill, leaving it behind like a serial killer leaves a plea written in blood. You cannot stop me, I will kill again, I cannot help myself. 

Dave had even heard about units back home catching wind of the popularity of the card, gathering entire packs with just the single card printed 52 times. Hell, the government was more than willing to provide something that cost so little, but kept young boys in their service until they died and were replaced, and the next boy inherited their playing cards. 

But Dave wasn’t like that.

When Dave was young, he grew to hate the word ‘soft’. What should have been a word that felt like blankets and cotton balls and a mother’s hands was instead used as a barb, a tease, an accusation. 

Dave cried when the neighbour’s cat was hit by a car.

Dave hid behind his mother when his father yelled.

Dave slept in his baby sister’s bed when she woke up crying from nightmares.

The boy was soft, too soft. Boys shouldn’t be that way.

Going to war was supposed to harden Dave, make him a man, but it only made his heart hurt more for the people he saw and what they were going through. Sometimes what _they_ were putting them through. So Dave did become a man at war, but not the kind of man his father and uncle had hoped. Dave became a kind man, a vulnerable man, a man who could fall in love with Klaus Hargreeves and keep him.

Dave met Nicky during his first tour. Nicky was already on his third, a self-professed Lifer, and he took one look at young, soft Dave, barely into his twenties looking like just the plane ride over had left him shell shocked, and decided that it was his job to take care of him.

Nicky was sweet. He was from a giant Italian family sprawled across Brooklyn. His father had served in the army during the second world war, had clung to his rabbit foot and his card and his mother’s picture, and said they had kept him safe while he ducked bullets on the Western Front. He’d given it to Nicky, and the night that Nicky and Dave kissed for the first time, Nicky had given his soft boy his dad’s card and told him it would keep him safe.

Dave had put the card securely in the band of his helmet, and there it stayed. He never left it behind, never cycled it out, never used it to strike fear in the hearts of other soft boys like him.

His squadmates teased him, of course. Nicky was gone by his second tour, and it wasn’t like he could tell them why the card was important, so they chalked it up to a Dave thing. Called him soft. That was okay, though. He didn’t hate the word anymore. He _was_ soft, and he’d rather be that than hardhearted and mean.

Before long the teasing got old, but they kept calling him Ace. The only Sky Soldier soft enough to keep his playing card.

Klaus listened as Dave spoke, smiling softly (another soft boy, despite his sharp angles and edges). “That,” he pronounced, “is the cutest fucking thing I have ever heard.” He had that look in his eye like he wanted to push Dave to the ground and bite his lips in the name of kissing. Dave glanced around, and - seeing no one- darted forward before his reckless boyfriend could, pecking his lips in a short, sweet kiss, leaving it behind to tide him over. Appeased, Klaus shifted his weight over, his shoulder pressed up against Dave’s.

“So, what happened?”

“When?”

“To Nicky?”

Dave shrugged. “What happens to anyone over here? He got shot. I wasn’t even there.” Dave worked his jaw back and forth, like the hurt was a stiffness that he could stretch away. “Honestly, I don’t know if that’s worse or not.”

Klaus, who had a brother bleed out two cities away from where he was getting high in a public bathroom nodded in understanding. “Yeah. I get that.” 

***

Unlike Nicky, when Klaus was shot, Dave was right beside him. Klaus had been fucking around, cracking jokes and not looking where he was supposed to be. If he had been, maybe he would have taken the bullet to the heart, or the lung, but thank God for Klaus’ inability to be serious for five fucking minutes, because the bullet buried itself in his shoulder blade, instead. It wasn’t exactly a graze, the field medic did have to dig the slug out, but it hadn’t been deep, either, and the only reason he was given any time in the field hospital at all was because he happened to be left-handed and the bone of his left shoulder blade had cracked quite a bit, what with a bullet hitting it full speed.

One summer, when Dave was little, probably around 12 or 13, he caught a terrible case of pneumonia and was bed-ridden for weeks. For days and days every breath was a struggle, his lungs feeling heavy and waterlogged, like he was drowning in his own bedroom. There was no room in them for oxygen, and it felt like every inhale stopped in his throat. 

When he heard the breath punch out of Klaus mid-word, when he saw the blood seeping down his back while he cracked jokes to keep Dave from panicking (it didn’t work), Dave felt his lungs fill up, just like they had when he was a kid. There was no room for air, every breath stopped short in his throat, but this time he wasn’t drowning from the inside, water-logged organs and wet gasps. This time his lungs were filled with acrid smoke, with blood and gunpowder and the words ‘ _Not again, not him, too._ And it didn’t stop. The whole time Klaus was hidden away, the whole time Dave was expected to keep marching and patrolling and sweeping and cleaning his rifle, he couldn’t even breathe. He couldn’t get the air past his throat, and don’t people need to breathe to survive? 

When Klaus was released from the field hospital (well, released is a very kind word, he was more evicted for incessant chatter and getting caught trying to steal morphine pills), he literally stumbled across Dave right away, tripping over someone’s rucksack in the bunk tent and swearing in German while on his way to get clothes that didn’t smell like disinfectant. (The two were like magnets, like homing beacons set to each other. They couldn’t help but be drawn together.) 

Dave was lying on his bunk, breathing slowly and carefully, and re-reading Dune. He shot up at the sound of Klaus’ expletives (“Du kannst mich mal, du Hurensohn! Verdammt Scheibe!” ) and was at Klaus’ side before the other man had fully found his own feet again. The tent was too crowded, and Dave was too… he didn’t even know what, so he grabbed Klaus by the wrist, turning him around and back out into the camp, not stopping until they were far enough away for everyone else to be able to claim ignorance. Klaus, who had willingly let himself be led away, smiled, bemused, when Dave turned to face him.

“Oh, hello.” He raised his right hand, wiggling his fingers. Dave didn’t smile back. Instead, he gripped the hem of Klaus’ shirt, pulling it up and over his head, spinning him to look at his back.

“This is probably the fastest you’ve ever gone from hello to getting me naked. Wait...no. No, not even close. Nevermind, carry on.” Klaus waited a moment, felt Dave’s fingertips ghosting across his back. “You okay back there, Davey?”

Rather than an answer, Klaus felt Dave’s head come to rest against his back, the tips of his curls tickling the base of Klaus’ neck. Klaus, while bendy, wasn’t double-jointed, and was thus at a loss as to how to proceed. 

“Baby?” he tried, “Feel like joining the class over here?” He felt blindly behind him, his fingertips catching Dave’s elbow and he pulled gently. Just as Klaus had so easily followed Dave into the jungle, Dave followed Klaus’ hand back around to face him. “Hey, hey, c’mon, what’s this?”

“You got _shot_.” Dave could barely whisper it. His lungs had only just started to fill with air again, he couldn’t part with enough to speak loudly.

“Yeah, but I’m okay. Look at me, I’m okay! A little scratch, a little R&R, it was like going on vacation.” Klaus wiggled his shoulders and hips, dancing a little for Dave. Dave’s responding smile was small and pained, and didn’t last very long. “It’s gonna take more than one little bullet to take me out, baby, I promise.” Klaus tried again, running his fingers lightly across the frown line between Dave’s eyebrows. “I went to Daddy Hargreeves’ school for murder babies, remember? Not my first GSW.”

“That’s not as comforting as you think it is.” Dave rolled his eyes with a shaky exhale, reaching out and gripping lightly at the elbow of Klaus’ raised arm.

“Mmm, well, comfort wasn’t one of the classes, I’ll admit. Please tell me you haven’t been worried about me this whole time.”

“Wouldn’t you have been worried about me?” 

Klaus was taken aback, physically and mentally, his head jerking minutely away. He frowned, “Of course I would have. But that’s different.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, yeah.” Klaus laughed. Of course it was different, didn’t Dave see how different it was? Didn’t he know what he meant to Klaus? 

“Why?” Apparently not, because he looked… confused, exasperated, all those things that meant Klaus was mentally in an entirely different conversation than the one he was actually having.

Well, fuck. Klaus had intended to go to his grave with this one, but here Dave was, forcing his hand. 

“Well, because you’re, you know. You’re you. And I’m me.” Well, he could at least hedge around it.

But Dave’s frown was deepening, and Klaus could practically see the gears turning in that beautiful head. Nope, still wasn’t getting it. Klaus sighed, long and dramatic, flailing his free hand a little.

“Just...you know. Garrison goggles, or whatever the guys call it. I know I’m hot, baby, but I’m a lot to put up with, yeah? Not like you. _Anyone_ would want to hold onto you. War or no war.”

“What, you think I’m going to just, just break up with you? When we’re not here anymore?”

“I’ve historically not been asked to stick around past my useful period. And, you know. The only visible queer in the area, and all.” Klaus shrugged.

“Oh my _God_ Klaus, you’re so fucking dumb sometimes.”

“Well hey, don’t sugarcoat it or anything.” Klaus started to pull away. 

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. Just,” Dave took in a deep breath. Still air, okay, good. He let it out again slowly while Klaus watched on, his eyes cautious, and damnit, Dave fucked up.

Dave inched forward, closing the space Klaus had unconsciously put between them. His shirt was still hanging around his neck like a scarf, so Dave was able to settle his hands on the cool skin at Klaus’ waist. “I’m not with you because you happen to be here and happen to be gay, Klaus. You somehow falling through time and space to land almost _literally_ at my feet was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I want to hold onto you. Not as long as you’re useful, not as long as we’re in a warzone. I want you as long as you’ll keep me.”

“You can’t just say things like that, Dave…” Klaus mumbled, staring at Dave’s chest, unable to look him in the eyes.

“I can if they’re true.”

“No, it’s not… you’re not- fuck. Dave, I’m not that guy. I’m not like you. I’m not someone people fall in love with.”

Dave couldn’t help but smile, though he fought valiantly. “Did you just tell me you loved me in Klaus-speak?”

Klaus scowled. “Absolutely not.”

“Yes, you did.”

“You’re missing the point!” 

Dave moved his hands from Klaus’ waist to cup his face. “The _point_ is that I love you, and there’s nothing you can say to convince me otherwise. When you got shot I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t function as a person, much less a soldier. Not until just now, until I could see you for myself, see you whole and healthy and utterly foolish enough to think I wasn’t head over heels for you.”

Klaus’ face was pained, like he was fighting off the urge to argue, or cry, or make a joke and run away. Dave tipped forward until their foreheads were pressed together, his hands still gently cradling Klaus’ face. 

“You’re the only thing that matters to me. I love you, I can’t lose you. So don’t get shot again, okay?”

Klaus laughed, and Dave politely ignored how wet it sounded. “I’ll do my best, but no promises.”

“Mm-mm, not good enough.” Dave leaned in, kissing Klaus lightly on the lips. And then again, and again, until their mouths were moving together, hot and wet, and they lost all track of time, barely making it back to camp before everyone was in bed.

The next morning when Klaus got dressed for patrol, his helmet had a familiar playing card tucked securely in the band.

***

Things were quiet, relatively, for months after Klaus came back onto duty. The 173rd were stationed as reinforcements for one of the major camps just a week or so later, but it wasn’t getting any action at the moment. Every day was just a waiting game for when the calm would break and they’d either be inundated with advancing forces, or the camp would be deemed a non-priority and their platoon would be sent to the front.

The front came first.

It wasn’t _always_ heavy fire, but it was always something. Even Klaus, who had once stayed awake for over a week in Rio, was more exhausted than he ever remembered being in his life. The Brass were handing out like speed like candy, but it barely touched the fatigue anymore. There were rumours that if they managed to defend this hill for just another couple of days, they’d be sent further back to the coast again, to an area their side held onto more tightly, where they could maybe sleep for a few hours in a row.

The hill was by far the most serious action they’d seen since Klaus had been shot, months ago. Since Dave had given away his ace of spades. (Which no one had been stupid enough to mention. There were actually three FNGs who had no earthly clue as to why everyone called Katz ‘Ace,’ of all things.) Rapid fire was exchanged between the two forces, it was chaotic, and it was dark, and raining, and when a bullet whizzed past his ear, Klaus couldn’t help but laugh, just on the crazy side of hysterical.

Fuck, maybe there _was_ something to these goddamn playing cards. Weirder things had happened to Klaus than a good luck charm actually bringing good luck. (His birth, for one, comes to mind. The rest of his existence, for another). He turned to share the joke with Dave, cursing over how close it was, about to say how lucky he was, that Dave loved him so much.

Except that Dave didn’t respond. Didn’t laugh, didn’t roll his eyes, didn’t frantically try to say with hand signals alone that Klaus should really be eyes front right now. Instead, he was lying, face down in the dirt of Hill 689, and at first Klaus thought he was just ducked behind the sandbags, that maybe he was reloading his weapon or, shit, maybe he had passed the fuck out, it wasn’t unheard of. But when he shook Dave’s shoulder he wasn’t swatted away, blue eyes didn’t turn to meet his, Dave didn’t startle awake, realizing he’d _fallen asleep_ in the middle of a _literal gunfight._

Instead, Klaus had to roll him onto his back and see Dave’s beautiful face gone sickeningly pale. See blood bubble out from between his lips when he tried to say something - anything, really. See the mess over the front of his shirt and feel how hot Dave’s blood was as his heart pumped it out of his body while Klaus tried desperately to hold it in with his bare, shaking hands. 

Because, of course, Dave had given up his card, put it in Klaus’ helmet to keep _him_ safe. How fucking unlucky, that Dave loved him so much.

His helmet hit the ground as Klaus curled in on himself, hands switching frantically between the hole in Dave's chest and the sides of his face, not sure whether fruitlessly trying to stop the bleeding or fruitlessly begging Dave to look at him, to stay with him, would make him stay alive longer. Long enough for a medic who was never going to come, or a sudden ceasefire, or Klaus' stupid powers to miraculously change into something _useful,_ but none of that ever happens. None of it was ever going to.

***

There was a part of Klaus that didn’t really want to wash the blood off of himself. 

It was gross, he knew. He was dizzy from the smell of copper. His fingernails hurt, the flaking, drying blood hardening underneath and pushing his nails up and out. Just looking at his hands sent him immediately back to the hill and the bloody handprint he left on the side of Dave’s face when his squadmates grabbed him around the waist, dragged him away.

(They didn’t hold the hill. Klaus couldn’t find it in himself to care. It’s not like he didn’t know he was fighting in a hopeless war.)

Dave was _gone_.

Dave was gone, and his body was half a world and half a century away. And at the same time, it was probably a few states over, decomposing in the ground, or ashes on his sister Rachel’s mantle. 

Dave was gone, and his body was gone, but his blood was still on Klaus’ hands, and it might be gross, and it might be morbid, but fuck if it wasn’t one of the hardest things he’d ever done to wash it down the drain.

All Klaus had left of the only person he can honestly say he’s ever loved, the only person who he ever met and felt something in his chest click into place, and something in his head say, “Oh, it’s you.”, all he had left of him was a set of dog tags, a tattoo on his stomach, and that blood swirling down the drain.

Because half a world and half a century away, Dave was lying, dead and alone, on a muddy hill, next to that useless fucking ace of spades, still tucked into Klaus' abandoned helmet.


End file.
